[gerthworm]

Gyro for keeping straight.

As to autonomous stuff, seems like more and more teams are going to a path-planner solution. Before autonomous starts, a set of x/y coordinate waypoints are fed into the algorithm. An output is generated that indicates varying desired velocities for each side of the drivetrain over the time duration of the path traversal.

In this case, each side of the drivetrain has an encoder feeding a PID to control the actual wheel velocity to the desired velocity (from the path-planner). To augment this, a gyro may be used to provide a "correction factor", which reduces error from wheel scrub or going over rough defenses.

Net result in 2016 was a ~50% accurate high-goal autonomous routine under the low bar. Not as good as some of the really slick vision systems, but we're still pretty proud of it...